15 Songs I Can't Stop Playing (from 2009)

Limit one per artist!

1. "Town Without Pity" by Gene Vincent
Has everyone else made playlists out of their mix tapes? This song is mix tape gold. Why aren't there any bands that sound like this anymore?

2. "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen
I'm a bit unclear as to exactly what the plot is in this song, but I know it's about betrayal, at least. And it's full of terrific lines. "Slow dancing in the dark in the beach at Stockton's wing / where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the Duke Street kings." Evocative of another era that has just recently died out. You just don't SEE greaser gangs anymore, do you? I don't like the sound of the "Born to Run" record nearly as much as the first two Bruce albums, but this one is in my head this week. "For You," off the first record, is ALWAYS in my head. I wish I'd written the line "your life was one long emergency."




3. "Cowboys" by Counting Crows
The desperate, soaring, hard rocker may be the best song these guys have ever done (and they've done some great ones; they deserve better than to be cast as a "90s band" or lumped in with prep rock jam bands, as they usually are). Here, Adam Duritz imagines himself trying to change the world and make people notice him not with music, but with murder. "If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep who wanted to change the world / what's as easy as murder?/ it's all headlights and vapor trails / and circle K killers." If this wasn't such a hard rocker, it would sound like it belonged on Bruce's "Nebraska" record. He throws himself so far into this one vocally that it teeters on the brink of cartoonishness, but the raw power of it saves it.

4. "Engine Driver" by The Decemberists
Another that I can't QUITE make out the plot of; the narrator moves up from job to job through life (jobs like "county lineman," "engine driver," "writer of fiction" and "money lender," building up fortunes, all for a woman who may or may not love him back - kinda reminds me of "Great Expectations." And the harmonies are just gorgeous.

5. "Becky" by Be Your Own Pet
Another murder song, this time by a group of high schoolers (I think) fantasizing about killing a former BFF and going to juvie. I love the bridge, in which the band (and the audience, I assume) chants "we don't like becky anymore."

6. "God is God" by Joan Baez.
Steve Earle wrote this song for Joan - he describes it as "recovery-speak." My favorite of many great lines is "maybe someone's watching and wondering what it is I got / maybe this is why I'm here on earth, and maybe not."

7. "Dignity" by Bob Dylan
My favorite song by my favorite songwriter - on the one hand, this is a terrific song about looking for dignity in an undignified world. That would be enough, but it's also a noir mystery about the hunt for this mysterious character known as "Dignity." You can look at it either way or both. There are three very different versions floating around, each with some different verses. The piano demo has the wonderful "soul of a nation is under the knife / death is standing in the doorway of life / in the next room a man is fighting with his wife" over Dignity." Then there's the great AND hilarious verse: "englishman stranded in a black hawk wind / combing his hair back, his future looks thin (ha!) / he bites the bullet and looks within / for dignity." In 30+ shows I've never seen Dylan play this live, though I did hear it soundchecked once.

8. "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" by Pearl Jam.
This is the kind of Pearl Jam songs I like best - weird little character sketches that play like little short stories. This one from the point of view of an old woman, possibly coming down with alzheimer's, having working in the same small town for decades, seeing an old flame whose name she can't quite remember pull into the diner. So many great lines, "memories like fingerprints are slowly raising," "cannot find the candle of the thought to light your name" (such a fine image that I ignore my occasional thoughts that The Candle of Thought is a kinda clunky metaphor - he makes it work).

9. "You Can Make Him Like You" by the Hold Steady
Just a straight up rocker by the best band in the business these days, for my money. Another band that realy excells at character sketches that make small towns look bad. I love those. I only wanted to put one of their songs on this list, and kinda chose one at random from the dozen or two I can't stop playing.

10. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (live) Bruce Springsteen with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine
I enjoy Morello's solo stuff much more than I enjoy Rage, but hearing him tear this song UP is something that I never get tired of. His presence here allows me to break my "one per artist" rule. Saw Morello open for the Hold Steady a few weeks ago and he blew me away - great monologue about how his left wing political beliefs aren't REALLY from racism on the playground or reading Noam Chomsky - a lifetime as a Cubs fan has just taught him to root for the underdog (and how he's a bit miffed that Obama stole his act - he too had a Kenyan father, a white midwestern mother, and went to Harvard, but hasn't been on the cover of Rolling Stone nearly as many times as Obama).

11. "Annie Waits" by Ben Folds
Folds has never topped the "Rockin' the Suburbs" album - I'm a sucker (if you couldn't tell) for great character songs, and this album overflows with them. In this song, he injects a TON more backstory in just by throwing the in a couple of lines about an "I." We've got this great song about a lonely girl waiting for a guy to show up, and that's all well and good, but he ups the ante just by throwing in the line "Annie waits...but not for me." Then, after more about Annie, there's "Annie sleeps and dreams / who will be the one forever more / annie, I could be / if we're both still lonely when we're old." one line that adds volumes to the story here.

12. "The Sharpest Lives" by My Chemical Romance
These guys are hilarious. Sure, they act all emo, but you can kinda see them grinning behind it. It's all an act! This hard rocker has vampires and lights to burn empires with in it. And the funny line in the pre-chorus that goes "Why don't you blow me a kiss before she goes" with the pregnant pause before he says "a kiss." Juvenile, sure, rock is allowed to be juvenile.

13. "Valentine's Day in Juarez" by The Ike Reilly Assassination
One of the catchiest songs by what is, I daresay, the most overlooked rock band out there. Hard rocking and terrific lyrics. This guy should be a star. Instead, he's kind of a local hero.

14. "No Woman No Cry (live version) by Bob Marley.
The slow organ really elevates this to seem like so much more than a song about sharing your porridge. Frat boys have ruined Bob Marley, haven't they? Well, ignore 'em. I think they guy was kind of a nut, personally, but songs like this show what he could do when he put his mind to it.

15. "Hats Off to Larry" by Del Shannon
How I made it more the twenty years of listening to classic rock without hearing this song is beyond me. Such a gleeful kiss-off to a girl. "Hats off to Larry / he broke her heart..."